


Silence Fell

by CorvidFeathers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Modern AU, The Barricade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:46:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no time for words, and too much time for thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence Fell

**Author's Note:**

> Spawned by a conversation with lightning-st0rm and tranquilchaos28, for a hypothetical conclusion to our group modern AU

The pavement was cold beneath Jehan’s fingers, and with a dull spark of realization he realized it was raining. He did not know how much time had passed since the clouds had opened up and begun pouring down onto the chaos below. Between blows all sense of time had fractured in his minds, and fallen to the earth like the shards of glass beneath his fingertips. They sparkled in the dim light, reflecting back the cloudy sky in their jagged faces. He lay there and watched them, disconnected and for a moment almost content, aside from the thick taste of blood that lingered in his mouth and the blows that caught his side and head again.

What he realized was no more than an instant later he was hauled to his feet, rough voices snarling around him. The sudden jerk knocked some clarity back into his senses, just in time to hear his name screamed behind him. 

He turned and just caught a glimpse of a lone figure on the barricade for an instant, a flash of red coat and blonde hair. For an instant their eyes met, an instant far too brief to impart any of the words Jehan wanted to speak. Then Enjolras disappeared behind the protection of the barricade and Jehan was shoved back around, and up against the wall.

Terror was creeping up in the back of his throat. No, no I can’t die like this, he thought, digging his fingernails into his palms. The cold metal of an officer’s gun was shoved between his shoulderblades, and he could remember the cool weight of a gun all too well. Had he killed anyone? There had been too much chaos to tell, but that had been his intent… His hands were trembling now. He could be brave, he thought, he could be brave if only he was facing the guns.

A small part of him screamed that this was insane, it was against everything he had learned from Bahorel’s scornful discourse on the law, and the prelaw courses his parents had always told him to take and he’d rarely showed up at… But that part of him was reminded that none of this made any logical sense anymore. Not in the context of the world he had once lived in, the world of quiet dawns and words scribbled across paper, of meetings that stretched long into the night and roaring debates. Of jaunts across the city at four in the morning and flyers denouncing injustices of all manners plastered across the streets of Paris. Nothing except they were fighting for what they believed in. For change.

He clung to that now. He believed, with all his heart, this had to be one step towards a better world. Whether they were staggering blindly or not was up for the future to decide. But months, years of planning and meeting and rallies and nights spent curled up in the coziness of Combeferre’s apartment, debating the points of the universe with eight other voices, that time had finally paid off. Reached its apex at the mass of furniture that loomed behind him.

And for him, reached its conclusion. 

The barricade had been the turning point in their discussion lately, as the months dragged on and their more peaceful intervention did nothing. He had seen it a hundred times in his poetry, in his dreams, in the words of the histories that he skimmed over Combeferre’s shoulder. The barricades were the hill from which the sun would raise, bringing the dawn upon the cold city streets.

Enjolras must be crouched behind them now, waiting. Jehan could picture him vividly at that instant, his back pressed against a crate, and his pistol clutched in his hands. His golden hair would be untouched by the downpour, even as the raindrops spattered his scarlet coat a dark crimson. His lips would be parted, blue eyes staring into nothing as he focused on the voices beyond the barricade. As he waited, in an agony of apprehension.

Jehan tried to picture to others for a moment, but his mind shied away from it. He could imagine their faces all too well. It hurt. 

He didn’t want to die.

He was going to die.

He saw Enjolras’s face again in his mind, waiting from behind the barricade. The wheels in his mind spinning, and catching on nothing, because there was no words, no plan, no weapon that could return Jehan to him now. All he could do was agonize and wait.

The thought lent Jehan an odd sort of courage.

He spun around, tearing away from the hands that grasped him. A moment later he was pinned again, but pinned with his back against the wall, facing the guns and the emotionless faces of those whose fellows he had fought.

The terror was back, clawing at him. He didn’t want to die. It was raining, it was miserable, all he could taste was blood, and everything hurt. It wasn’t the moment of elation he had pictured. It wasn’t a heroic demise. It was… quiet. Muffled.

But at the click of half a dozen rifles, he remembered he loved the rain.

How often had he dragged Bahorel or Courfeyrac out onto this very street in the rain, laughing and running ahead as they slogged through the puddles? The raindrops had hardly seemed to touch him, and he’d never felt their chill. And when the rain ended the sun would return to the sky twice as bright for its ordeal.

The rainfall hid his tears, just as it had muffled his laughter countless times before.

Not even the rain could drown the words that rung out loud and clear, without a quaver or regret.

“Long live France! Long live the Future!”

Then there was only rain.


End file.
